Larry Harper Talks To CBS 42 About Mayor Langford's Free Life Insurance Program

Apr 16, 2008

Brock School of Business Contact: Kara Kennedy, Director of External Affairs, 205-726-4070, kkennedy@samford.edu

By Phillip Ohnemus-CBS 42

It seems like every Tuesday Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford has new plan for Birmingham.

Well this week is no different as Langford announced a program that will provide low income Birmingham parents with free life insurance! "It's all on the table, any parent who has an opportunity to take advantage of this life insurance and doesn't, that's not a parent!"
Mass Mutual Financial Group is responsible for the billion dollar policy which will pay up to 50-thousand dollars in educational expenses for a child whose parent has died.

Spokesman Steve Stone says this is the companies way of giving back. "We have over 17-thousand policy holders in the state and it's Mass Mutual's way of giving back to the community."

Council members were elated at a policy that will cost the beneficiaries and city nothing.
Councilman Joel Montgomery peppered the Mass Mutual Reps with a series of questions but in the end relented saying only "It's almost too good to be true!"
Valerie Abbott required less convincing. "As far as I'm concerned I'm ready, this sounds great. Nothing is better than free!"

But while the Billion dollar number is very impressive, it's also a little bit deceiving. In fact, if you divide that number by the 50-thousand dollars that the policy will pay out, you'll actually find that only 20-thousand families in the entire country can take advantage of this offer before the Billion dollar cap is reached."

And the program isn't new, it's been on the books since 2002, and as of today 8,400 spots or 420-million dollars is already spoken for. That leaves just under 12-thousand spots available.

So does the limited number of spots make this a bad deal for Birmingham families? Larry Harper with Samford University's Brock School of Business says no.
Harper after looking at the information packet released to the media says he believes the plan is legit even if it is limited. He says what the plan comes down to is good corporate responsibility on the part of Mass Mutual.

But he admits there may be more to the plan than that. The generosity is also a great marketing strategy. Harper says what Mass Mutual gets out of the deal is excellent PR and word of mouth advertising as those who qualify for the program spread the word.
So how do you qualify?

You have to be a legal US resident and an employed parent between the ages of 19 and 42 with a household income between 10-thousand dollars and 40-thousand dollars a year.
You'll also have to fill out some paper work and submit to a urine a test.

Because Mayor Langford expects a large response to the Mass Mutual offer he's offered to use the Boutwell Auditorium and Fair Park Arena as staging points for the program.